Inquiries
by nouore
Summary: Penelope Garcia has some questions for her team members.
1. Morgan

A/N: I do not own any recognizable characters.

Chapter One: Just a Question

"Would you ever have sex with me? Garcia asked Morgan.

They were in his home in Virginia, relaxing after three straight weeks of cases. She stood in front of a wall of full length mirrors while he sat in an armchair on the opposite side of the room.

"What?" Morgan replied. He put his book down on a coffee table and looked up at his best friend.

She was admiring herself in the mirror, turning this way and that. Her hair was blonde once more, but she left a few streaks of red in the back. The purple dress she decided to wear stood out against her pale skin and its red accents went perfect with her red lips. She took off her shoes when she came into the house and Morgan smiled at the memory of Garcia threatening his dog Clooney to not chew on her footwear.

"Well?" Garcia pushed. "Would you?" She looked at him through the mirror and gave him a big smile. It was a question that had been on her mind for a few weeks. Kevin was out of the picture but that didn't put her sex life on hold. She played around with the best and the worst of them; the new attention made her curious.

"I thought our relationship didn't require actual sex," Morgan answered. Her smile faded.

"I know that. But I am not asking you to get naked and meet me in your bedroom. I am only asking if you would."

"Yes… Yes, I would." Garcia smiled at his answer and turned her attention to her hair.

In the silence that followed, Morgan thought about a night from Garcia's early days at the BAU. They ended up at the same bar but they hardly knew each other. When he went to get more drinks for the young women he was entertaining, he overheard some comments from other patrons. A group of society girls singled in on Garcia's clothing, a dark blue dress with silver accents. Morgan thought she looked like the night sky. A group of young male professionals had a conversation about whether or not she was girlfriend material. What really made Morgan see a glimpse of his future companion was the way Garcia carried herself. She wasn't on the phone pretending to read non-existent emails. Nor did she have her head down trying to hide from the rest of the bar. No, she sat straight in her seat with a small smile on her face while she waited for her associates. Once they showed up, her face lit up like the sun. For the rest of the night, whenever Morgan glanced over, her booth was the life of the bar.

Now looking over at Garcia many years later, Morgan silently confirmed his answer. He always thought she was beautiful in her own way. Time spent with her let him know that she knew it as well. But there was something different about her compared to the other women he had been with.

Would he ever have sex with her? Yes, if only for the experience of being with his best friend. And even then he would hope that it doesn't change their relationship too much. For the most part, Derek feared he would want something more.


	2. Hotch

A/N: I do not own any recognizable characters.

Chapter Two: Not a Lost Cause

"Can't you give me one smile?" Garcia asked Hotch.

"There is nothing to smile about, Garcia." And on the surface, he was right, but Garcia was not about to let him lose faith in the situation.

"We are alive. I can smile about that." He couldn't see her but she placed one of her more toothy grins on her face.

"I don't know for how long that will be true." They were trapped in the basement of the police department. It turned out that the unsubs were same people who called them to help solve the string of murders plaguing the small town.

"The team will figure it out, and we will be rescued." Garcia said in Hotch's general direction. Before one of the officers turned the light off, she saw that she and her boss were handcuffed to shelves on opposite sides of the fairly large basement. Hotch was blindfolded and someone took Garcia's glasses.

"If they are not killed first, we will be rescued." Hotch was running out of ideas. All of his plans would produce too much noise.

"So you are just going to sit there and wait for them to kill us?" She was worried about the hopelessness in his voice.

"I am thinking of a plan, but everything will draw too much attention."

"Do you need a distraction?"

"What?"

"A distraction. Should I start crying hysterically? Or… ooh! I know. I could always pull the bathroom card. These police officers are still country boys and they won't let a woman not use the facilities."

"And what would you do once you get to a restroom?" All of his plans involved Garcia as a bystander, never an active participant.

"Pull the period card so I can get my purse."

Hotch thought about it for a few seconds. "What if they go through your purse for you?"

"Good question. I'll think of something. At least I could report back to you and we could go from there. We will have guaranteed eyes on the situation from that point on."

"How do you know that?"

"Hotch… a girl has to regularly use the facilities if she is on her period."

"Hmm… that… might work." He was amazed at the complex simplicity of her plan.

"Look at you. You're smiling."

"How do you know?"

"I can hear it in your voice."

"Really?"

"Yeah. And the lights are back on."


	3. Rossi

A/N: I do not own any recognizable characters.

Chapter Three: For Confirmation Purposes

The team was in Montana. They needed Garcia to travel with them because the unsub used computer code as his calling card. She had just finished creating a program that had narrowed down the list of suspects to five by using the code the unsub provided.

"Two days in this office and all you can come up with is a program that is probably as worthless as you are," the sheriff told Garcia in front of the BAU team and many of the small town's officers. "I refuse to believe you are actually doing work. You hardly look like you know how to turn a computer on."

Hotch and the rest of the team each glared at the sheriff, ready to attack. But, understanding that her team was close to retaliating, Garcia spoke up.

"If you want to catch this guy, you should move now," she told Hotch with too much cheer in her voice. Seeing that she didn't want any tension, Hotch began delegating who will go where and they all began to head out. The local officers were still reluctant to follow along but they went, leaving their sheriff in his office with the door closed.

"Rossi, I think it would be best if you stayed here with Garcia," Hotch whispered. "At least to make sure she is not by herself with that sheriff."

"Sure, no problem. Be safe," Rossi replied. Once everyone left to go to their appointed destinations, Garcia turned towards Rossi. Her face was flushed and she was tapping her foot against the chair leg.

"I'm amazing, right?" Garcia asked.

"Yes," Rossi answered without any hesitation.

"Then why is it that these people don't see it?" Garcia slumped down into the hard plastic chair. "I mean I have been in this cold police station for two days trying to figure out this guy's code." She took a deep breath. Rossi went to go get her a cup of water from the water cooler.

"I mean… I did good considering that each of the ten bodies was found with a journal filled with a bunch of programming languages all jumbled together." She took a drink of water. "And yet, that stupid jerk of a sheriff can't even appreciate my work."

They sat in silence, waiting for the return of their team. Rossi thought about his own first impressions of the technical analyst and regretted how he felt about her being as unnecessary as the sheriff thought her to be. _She just stands out, seemingly with no worry about what others think._ He remembered telling Hotch that her arrogance is what puts people at odds with Garcia.

He was shocked at the response Hotch gave him. "But Dave, that's not arrogance, it is confidence. People look at her and think that she is arrogant because a woman of Garcia's physicality shouldn't be confident if society has anything to say about it. It's scary."

After working with Garcia on so many cases over the years, Rossi learned to fear Garcia but also respect her. She had power beyond his imagination and was much more dangerous than anyone originally thought. He was worried what she would do to the sheriff currently on her radar.

Two hours passed with Dave going over the case file and Garcia continuing to work. Their team returned with a body bag and heavy hearts.

"He was found with more notebooks," Reid told the two team members that stayed behind as he sat down in one of the free chairs.

"So there are more victims out there," Rossi responded with a sigh. Reid just nodded his head. The team was silent as they began packing up to head back to Quantico.

Rossi watched as Garcia took the clip out of her hair so that her curls fell down below her shoulders. He hadn't noticed she was growing out her hair and keeping the blonde color for longer than she usually did. It wasn't until she jolted out of her seat that he noticed her wearing jeans and tennis shoes.

"Garcia, where are you going?" Rossi called out as she headed straight for the sheriff's office. She was too far away for him to hold her back. When she reached the office, Garcia slammed the door behind her.

The team and the rest of the officers waited and listened. They heard yelling coming from both the sheriff and Garcia, more from her. The shouting continued for a few more minutes then abruptly stopped.

Fifteen minutes passed and the door opened.

"Why are you all just standing there?" Garcia asked her team. "I thought you would be all packed up by now."

Her mute team members responded by loading up their vehicles and saying whispered farewells to the police department. Hotch only received a "Have a nice trip" from the sheriff.

On the plane, Hotch sat in the seat in front of Garcia who was knitting a new scarf.

"Garcia, you do understand that relationships between the local authorities are fragile, right?" Hotch asked. Garcia nodded and said "Mmhmm". He wanted to have this conversation in his own office but he wasn't really reprimanding her because the sheriff deserved it.

"So publicly yelling at them can cause trouble for future cases," Hotch continued, knowing the rest of the team was listening in no matter how much energy they put into acting as if they were asleep.

"He won't cause any trouble for us," Garcia responded.

"How do you know?" Hotch asked.

"He is in the running for town mayor and I said that if he made any trouble for the BAU, then his opponent, the current mayor, and will learn about the affair that the sheriff documented with photos on his computers."

"The sheriff was sleeping with the mayor's wife," JJ asked, giving up on pretend sleep.

"The mayor's wife and the mayor's sister," Garcia said with a smile.

Hotch frowned. "Blackmailing the local authorities?"

"He asked for it" was Garcia's only response.

Hotch was on his way back to his seat when Prentiss asked Garcia "What did you do to get him to believe you?"

"I told him that I could rig all of the computers in the town to show the incriminating photos at random times," Garcia said with a smile.

"You couldn't do that though… right?" Reid asked. Garcia didn't answer right away. Just then, they each received a photo message that showed random places of the small Montana town they just left. The sender was Rossi.

"I didn't take these," Rossi said immediately.

"I did, when you all were gone," Garcia confessed. The team was stunned.

"All I would need is his cell phone," Garcia said. And the team just looked at her.

"I knew you were scary, but not that scary," Rossi told Garcia before he went back to reading his book.

While the rest of the team worried, he knew Garcia's actions were payback from when he spilled coffee on a computer in her office.


End file.
